Church has a critical role to play in sustainable and equitable development
“What [the field of economics has] discovered is what you’ve known for at least a century,” said Paul Collier, director of the U.K.-based Centre for the Study of African Economies. “What makes people work properly, is not primarily incentives. It’s internalizing the objectives of the organization.”
“Around the world, the church has built organizations that do just that,” he said.
Collier addressed a plenary session of the 2011 Catholic Social Ministry Gathering, which brought about 300 leaders in Catholic social ministry to Washington Feb. 13-16.
The economist said that development failures in Africa stem from two unsuccessful models. The first is based on 1950s European style state-run organizations that have proved to be ineffective, and the second, popularized in the 1990s, uses monetary incentives too closely tied to performance standards.
These models produced organizations, Collier argued, that often fail to deliver on their promises and mission because people who work for them put their own interests and the organizations’ interests ahead of those of the general public.
By contrast, church organizations have time and again proven that they are effective at delivering basic social services like education and healthcare because it is understood that the chruch provides a common good and a service that is in everyone’s best interest, he said.
Tags: Christianity